


Capes

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Series: Tender Is the Night [2]
Category: What We Do in the Shadows (TV)
Genre: (slaps the top of this fic) this bad boy can fit so much assuming unrequited feelings, First Dates, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Haircuts, Humor, Idiots in Love, Jealousy, Kissing in the Rain, M/M, Makeover, Making Out, Mutual Pining, Scar Worship, Scars, Swearing, Trans Guillermo de la Cruz, Trans Male Character, as always nadja is the one with the braincell, stephen the waiter did NOT sign up for this, two idiots standing half naked in a bathroom and still wondering if the other one is into them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28973259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: “Your scars made you into something that you liked to be,” says Nandor.Guillermo looks down. At his lap, at the interlocking of their fingers where both their hands are still pressed against his bare chest.“Well,” Guillermo says slowly around an audible swallow, “at the very least, your scars make you look badass, master.”Nandor stares at him.He could close the distance between them right now. He really could. They’re sitting impossibly close to each other, knees against each other in little pads of pressure, warm against cool, human against vampire. Neither of them is moving. Guillermo’s breath puffs against his skin, close enough for Nandor to feel it and suppress a shiver.He could just dip down his head and press his lips against Guillermo’s right now, and close his eyes and drink in his taste and savor him slowly, and he could finally,finallyknow what it feels like.--Nandor asks Guillermo to give him a modern makeover in preparation for a date. Little does Guillermo know the date is with him.
Relationships: Guillermo de la Cruz/Nandor the Relentless
Series: Tender Is the Night [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2125197
Comments: 23
Kudos: 51





	Capes

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by this utterly amazing artwork by actualfrog on tumblr of [Nandor in modern punk clothes](https://actualfrog.tumblr.com/post/620229280590381056/i-used-all-of-my-braincells-coloring-in-the-nandor). My brain immediately short-circuited upon seeing it, and then my little nandermo gremlins began to creep in with a thousand different ideas of how to flesh it out into a story.
> 
> Songs I listened to on repeat for the Vibe™ while writing this: ["Blvd"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXYTBAF_Cys) by Adam Ragsdale, and ["Space Song"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBtlPT23PTM) by Beach House

“People at the Wall-Mart are always so very rude,” Nandor huffs, the instant he and Guillermo step over the threshold of the Staten Island mansion and Nandor has chucked off his leather gloves onto the nearby console. “Imagine, Guillermo! That woman with the funny blonde haircut having the nerve to tell me I am a cozy-playing idiot!”

“Cosplaying,” Guillermo corrects him out of habit. “It was ‘cosplaying moron’.” He lugs the remaining plastic Walmart bags from the foyer into the kitchen and starts dumping the contents onto the counter.

Nandor waves a hand in his direction dismissively. “She was the moron. Everybody knows you don’t push your trolley so close to people’s feet where the wheels can get tangled up in the capes. That is only common etiquette.”

It’s--really not, Guillermo thinks, but like always he presses his lips together and keeps a judicious silence as he busies his hands rearranging the rows of Kraft mac-n-cheese in his human corner of the kitchen cabinets.

“She was definitely rude,” he decides to say at last, because the woman truly was abysmal and he also knows the faster he acquiesces with Nandor, the faster this conversation will go. “You know, we have a name for people like that--they’re called ‘Karens’.”

“Are all women with that accursed attitude named Karen?”

“No, it’s--” Guillermo wonders if Nandor recalls what he told him before about _memes_. “It’s an internet joke. Because Karen is like a very white American name, and it’s pretty typical for a certain kind of white American woman from that age group and socioeconomic background to...you know what, never mind.”

Nandor pokes around the open plastic bag closest to the edge of the counter, no doubt in search of his multipack of construction paper. “It’s okay when you explain these things, Guillermo. I don’t mind. But you really need to mind yourself that you don’t start speaking in tongues again. I think a lot of the time you forget yourself and you start speaking not-English.”

Guillermo really doesn’t. But he knows Nandor is just way too antiquated to distinguish internet lingo from ‘tongues,’ as he dubs Guillermo’s Spanish or modern turns of phrase.

“I’ll remember that, master,” he says. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about that Karen hating on your cape. It always looks really nice.” He looks up at Nandor at his side with a little smile, pushing his glasses up in the center with his finger.

Nandor hums noncommittally. The sound is unusually glum, even for Nandor who often gets these offhand comments and judgmental stares and brushes them off like the self-confidence warlord that he is.

“You are not ashamed to be with me, are you, Guillermo?” he asks in a small voice. The plastic wrapping of his craft supplies crinkles in his hands.

Guillermo starts. His mind races-- _be with me_? _Be with me how_? “Um…”

“I meant to be in public places with me, Guillermo. Well, that was a very silly question, because it is your responsibility to be at my side to attend to my needs, wherever I might require you. I am just a very generous master, you see. I think about your feelings from time to time.”

His familiar can recognize a backpedal when he sees one. Still, a tiny smile of appreciation flits over Guillermo’s face. He bends down to restock the Dawn dish soap in the cabinet under the kitchen sink before he answers. “I don’t mind, master. I mean, to be honest it was kind of strange in the beginning, but I’ve gotten used to it. You’re the one that people look at, anyway, not me.”

The last part is spoken in the softest drift of a voice. Nandor steals a glance sideways at his familiar, who has taken up folding the empty plastic bags into neat little rectangles. He loses himself in the rhythm of Guillermo’s fingers tugging and straightening the gray plastic and smoothing the bubbles of air out of them with a rustle.

“Well, I look at you, Guillermo,” Nandor says with the smallest hint of a frown.

“Oh, I know, master,” Guillermo says, in that particular tone of voice that tells Nandor he’s realized that they’ve both misunderstood each other’s implications.

\--

The very next evening, during one of Guillermo’s work breaks, Nandor flings open the door to his familiar’s little bedroom under the stairs and marches in with his laptop in hand.

“Nan--Master,” Guillermo says half-reproachfully, slipping his chunky silver headphones from his ears down to his neck.

But Nandor is a man on a mission. He shoves the laptop into Guillermo’s lap and unceremoniously plops himself down on the other side of the familiar’s bed, not too far from where Guillermo himself is seated.

Guillermo glances down fleetingly at where their knees almost touch, then looks back up with a reluctant sigh at the screen his master is showing him. It’s Google Images--predictably--Guillermo shudders to think what kinds of search paths Nandor would be able to manage in order to discover the darker corners of the internet--and he’s greeted with pages of brown men with long hair and trim, styled beards.

Guillermo adjusts his glasses by the rims of his left lens. He waits for an explanation.

“Well?” Nandor demands.

“What am I supposed to be looking at, master?”

“I want to change my style,” Nandor explains impatiently. He gestures up and down the screen. “Don’t you see? It is time to-- _update_ how I look. See how intimidating these humans manage to look? I have lost my touch. Humanity has stopped appreciating the raw power and sex appeal that emanate from my vests and capes.”

Well, Guillermo hasn’t stopped appreciating said raw power and sex appeal emanating from Nandor himself, but he wisely keeps that comment to himself.

Guillermo looks up at Nandor, then back down at the screen. With this new information in mind, he begins to see just what his master is trying to show him. There are several photos in a row where the models’ beards are trimmed much shorter than Nandor’s, revealing their jawlines partially, and it’s obvious that their hair is layered in keeping with more modern standards. Other models toward the bottom of the page sport loose, effortless buns, and Guillermo definitely doesn’t catch himself swallowing down sudden interest and arousal at the mere notion of Nandor looking like that, too.

“Okay,” he says, totally not out of breath. “Yeah--okay--fair enough. It’s cool if you want to change up your style.”

Nandor’s entire visage is awash with a riptide of glee. He erupts into a quiet little clapping fit. “Take some pictures of these pictures with your intelligent phone, Guillermo.”

“Oh, it’s fine, I can just download and save--”

“Take the pictures,” Nandor interrupts impatiently. “I do not want to lose these images. We must keep them at hand for when you help me with my...updating my style.”

Torn between a sigh and an indulgent smirk, Guillermo pulls out his phone and does as he’s told.

Satisfied, Nandor nods and stands, taking the laptop from Guillermo’s knees. He shuts it with a snap. “Oh, one more thing, Guillermo. Do not, under any circumstances, tell Nadja or Laszlo about this.”

“Um--of course, master.”

“I’m serious, Guillermo. You will receive many more demerits for this than the spider-house incident if I find out that you have blabbed to them.”

Guillermo recalls neither the spider-house incident nor the demerits that purportedly accompanied it. He shakes his head with as sober a look as he can muster. “I promise I’ll keep mum about it.”

“Oh, and Colin Robinson. I don’t think he would draw a lot of malignant pleasure from this endeavor, but you know how he talks and talks and talks. The others would know if he knows.”

Guillermo bites his lip and makes an x-shaped motion over his chest with his finger. “Cross my heart, hope to die.”

“ _Guillermo_ ,” Nandor hisses. “That is not very funny. Okay, breaky-break is over. Come over to my crypt so you can continue the rebraiding of the tassels on my coffin accent rug.”

“Yes, master,” says Guillermo, heaving himself up off his tiny cot and slipping on his loafers to shuffle out after Nandor.

\--

“Do you think I look old, Guillermo?”

The familiar clears his throat, covering up the embarrassing coughing fit from the dust in the feather duster getting kicked up into his eyes and nose. “I think--you look--you just look your age, master.”

A veritable wail erupts from Nandor. “You think I look _old_.”

“No, that’s--that’s not--master, that’s not what I meant!”

Nadja looks up from her sheet music, scowling at her fountain pen and at the general non-musical ruckus being raised about her. “What are you suffering about now, Nandor?”

“The human thinks I look fucking old.”

“I never said that.”

“I am seven hundred and fifty-eight years old, Guillermo, and you said I look just my age. I am not an idiot.”

“I never said you--”

“Cozy-playing, perhaps, but not an idiot,” Nandor clarifies.

“Oh, by the witch’s tit, shut up, Nandor,” says Nadja. “Go suffer in your corner more quietly. Personally, I think you’ve always looked like an ancient geezer. Those clothes do _not_ flatter your figure.”

Nandor opens his mouth and draws a deep breath to raise an even more vociferous cry. Sensing impending chaos of the vampiric nature, Guillermo hops down from his stepladder with alarming agility, seizes Nandor by the arm, and hauls their asses out of the library as fast as he fucking can.

\--

He’s a baby. Nandor’s a huge fucking baby. That’s what Guillermo really thinks, and it’s really testing every inch of every shred of patience he has left in him after ten years not to burst out with his honest opinion--even now, locked in the same bathroom as his master, who is perched on the edge of the clawfoot bathtub looking as wilted as Guillermo’s unwatered pet ivy from senior year of high school.

“I am old,” Nandor moans at nobody in particular. “I look antiquated...weighted down by this beard...these unflattering clothes...these _Karens_ who look like they think they could skewer me with their nails and make you ashamed to be seen with me…”

“You’re not old,” Guillermo says huffily. “You _are_ antiquated, but that’s because you say things like ‘perish’ and ‘begone’ and tell me to stab grocery store clerks. I don’t think your clothes are unflattering. Nadja was just being mean. You know how she gets when Laszlo doesn’t feel like helping her with a new song.” Guillermo folds his arms across his chest and thumps his head back against the wallpapered background. “And I am _not_ ashamed to be seen with you.”

Nandor makes little indication that he’s heard, much less registered anything that his familiar has just said, save for the little twitch of his head and the wringing of his hands in his lap.

“Master,” says Guillermo half in exasperation, half in fond understanding, “if you want me to trim your hair and beard now, you could’ve just said so.”

That gets Nandor to straighten up and sniff. “I was not planning that at all. But if you insist, Guillermo.”

Guillermo suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. Instead, he indulges a brief smirk, and crosses the bathroom to rummage around in the cabinet under the sink for the plastic bag of supplies he’s kept here for this exact purpose.

Nandor eyes him thoughtfully, keeping absolutely still, as Guillermo putters around the bathroom and then comes closer to peel back the bath curtain a bit further around the rim of the tub. He motions gently for Nandor to scoot over, and Nandor does, moving down the lip of the tub to make room for his familiar to sit beside him.

Guillermo has done this for him before, of course, whenever Nandor’s hair or beard got just a tad too long to be considered regal. It’s the first time, however, that he thinks back on their first hair-braiding session from several months ago, and remembers how Guillermo blurted out that he used to braid his own hair when he was younger--and now that little memory makes Nandor wonder if Guillermo has ever cut his own hair.

“Have you done this on yourself, Guillermo?”

Guillermo twirls the little metal shears in his fingers with a tiny knowing smile. Sometimes they have moments like this, when they both know what the other is thinking about and they arrive at the same place at the same time in their minds.

“Yeah. All the time, before I started getting days off and I could go get it done downtown.”

“Oh.” Oh. Nandor hadn’t considered that before.

“Tilt your head a little bit, please.” Guillermo nudges Nandor’s chin in the right direction with the tip of his finger. At the same time, he toes the bath mat away, but Nandor makes a face and pulls it back with his socked feet and buries his toes into the warm fur.

“Master, the hair’s gonna get caught in the mat.”

“Then you can take it out, Guillermo.”

Guillermo gives him a very particular look. Laszlo’s always going on about how Nandor’s familiar is too familiar with him, but frankly, secretly, Nandor wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Argh. Fine,” says Nandor, and kicks the bath mat away. Guillermo toes it back in their direction just so Nandor’s heels hit the edge of the warm and cozy fur if he stretches his legs out far enough. A compromise.

Guillermo guides Nandor’s chin up again and starts snipping, softly, methodically. Nandor eventually stops twisting his ringed fingers in and out of the lower buckles on his vest and relaxes into Guillermo’s touch. If he thought the hair-braiding sessions with his familiar were a worthy expense of his time being pampered and touched by his favorite human, then having his hair and beard trimmed by Guillermo is even more rewarding. There’s a kind of tacit submission, a levelling of the odds between them, and something in Nandor which he’s never bothered to articulate almost thrills at the idea of them being equals in a moment like this.

(This, of course, he would never tell his familiar in his right mind.)

A few minutes later, Nandor starts to feel the draft from underneath the bathroom door. He tries to glance down, but of course he can’t see his own chin, much less refer to a reflection in the mirror across the room.

He almost opens his mouth to warn Guillermo not to trim the beard back so much, but he’s cut short by the jolt of warmth on his skin as the pads of Guillermo’s fingers brush over the left side of his neck where no one has touched him in years, in centuries. His tongue is suddenly dry. Guillermo doesn’t stop, doesn’t seem to catch himself, but thumbs the bumps and luminous lines of Nandor’s scar there, staring, lips parted, transfixed.

Nandor should slap his hand away. Scold his familiar for daring to study him there, much less touch him. Instead he draws a deep breath and says, his voice strangely gravelly, “It was a nasty business. He tore my throat out, you know, and it never quite healed back to the way it was supposed to be. Did you know that?”

Under ordinary circumstances, Guillermo would have a sassy retort, something along the lines of _No, master, because you never open up about these things_. But his answering voice is just as hushed as his master’s. “No,” he says. “I didn’t.”

He waits. He doesn’t ask. _Snip, snip, snip_ , the scissors pick their rhythm back up, but Guillermo’s fingers still stray back to ghost over the evidence of Nandor’s turning.

“Did it hurt?” Guillermo asks after a minute.

Nandor wonders fleetingly if Guillermo’s thinking of the time Nandor asked him if his transition hurt. “No,” he says. And it’s been long, it’s been centuries, and Nandor doesn’t know anymore if his answer is still a lie.

Guillermo moves to the other side of his jaw to snip there. “Does it...hurt now?” he asks again.

What a strange little question, Nandor thinks--and even stranger that it somehow makes sense. “From time to time,” he says with a gentle shrug, almost imperceptible.

Guillermo lowers the shears and looks straight up into Nandor’s eyes, unguarded in a way that’s not uncharacteristic of him but in a way that unnerves Nandor every time it happens. Almost as if he’s not in control of his own body, Guillermo sets the shears down on the lip of the bathtub and lifts his hand to thumb the now visible scar on Nandor’s neck again.

“Guillermo,” says Nandor. He’s unsure of what comes next.

Then Guillermo’s unbuttoning his cardigan, which utterly confuses Nandor. Only when he starts unbuttoning his crisp starched shirt underneath, too, does it start to make sense to the vampire.

Guillermo unbuttons his shirt down to the waist where it’s tucked into his trousers, and peels back the cotton just enough to reveal his bare chest.

If Nandor still had a beating heart, it would be galloping right now. Never in ten years has he seen Guillermo unclothed, even partially, at least not this close. A part of his brain chastises him for intruding on Guillermo’s body, but his familiar was the one who opened up his shirt, who invited him in to see. And so his gaze dips down and alights on the lines of scars that gently curve upward underneath Guillermo’s pecs. They pull and shine in the light with a pinkish tint, skin growing perpetually in a different grain to the rest of Guillermo’s chest.

Nandor’s acquainted with scars. He has faced them in his men, his generals, on his own body. He has a fair share of them scattered all across his person in places Guillermo has seen and hasn’t seen. And Nandor is acquainted, in whatever capacity his seven hundred and something years of emotional repression as a supernatural entity have afforded him, with the different kinds of hurt and bittersweetness that accompany every scar.

Nandor can’t tear his eyes away.

“You said it hurt,” he says at last, like a question.

“Afterward, yeah. They put me under for the surgery, though. And I had painkillers and stuff to help a little bit while I was healing.”

Nandor’s hand reaches forward of its own accord. He catches himself at the last second, and his gaze flits up to tangle with Guillermo’s, seeking--not permission, exactly, but _something_.

“It’s okay, master,” Guillermo whispers. “You can touch.”

So Nandor does. Guillermo’s skin is warm as ever under his fingertips. He can feel the veins of life thrumming beneath his touch, and the ever-present _thump thump, thump thump_ of his human’s heart fills his ears even more closely now. He doesn’t know what kind of emotion he was expecting upon running his pointer finger over the scars on his familiar’s chest. Perhaps what surprises him most is that he feels--nothing.

Almost as if he’s always known, somehow, that this is just another part of Guillermo. That this doesn’t make his familiar any different.

The warmth of Guillermo’s hand engulfs Nandor’s, pressing it closer to his chest, taking the vampire by surprise.

“I’m okay with my scars,” Guillermo says simply. He nods in the direction of Nandor’s neck. Opens his mouth, and then closes it. Almost like a metaphor.

That one unspoken statement definitely feels too loaded for Nandor to even begin to unpack. All he knows is that if the door were open rather than locked--if the moon were in a different position or if anything in the evening had gone any different--Guillermo wouldn’t even be saying these things to him or looking at him in the inscrutable way that he is now.

“Your scars made you into something that you liked to be,” says Nandor.

Guillermo looks down. At his lap, at the interlocking of their fingers where both their hands are still pressed against his bare chest. His silence seems to rise up to challenge Nandor, at the same time that it says, _that’s true. Fair enough_.

“Well,” Guillermo says slowly around an audible swallow, “at the very least, your scars make you look badass, master.”

Nandor’s eyebrows shoot upward. That’s a new one.

And dammit, if the mere implication that Guillermo finds something irrevocably attractive about him doesn’t make him feel some type of way.

He could close the distance between them right now. He really could. They’re sitting impossibly close to each other, knees against each other in little pads of pressure, warm against cool, human against vampire. Neither of them is moving. Guillermo’s breath puffs against his skin, close enough for Nandor to feel it and suppress a shiver.

He could just dip down his head and press his lips against Guillermo’s right now, and close his eyes and drink in his taste and savor him slowly, and he could finally, _finally_ know what it feels like.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he slips his hand coolly out of Guillermo’s grasp and readjusts the rings on his fingers in what he hopes is a self-assured manner.

“That’s nice, Guillermo. Thank you for the encouragement.”

A cloud falls over his familiar’s face. His visage once again becomes unreadable. “You’re welcome, master.” And then Guillermo buttons his shirt back up again hastily, picks up the shears, and finishes his trim on the right side of Nandor’s face.

By the time his beard is done and Guillermo has almost finished with the gentle layered trim on the front pieces of his master’s hair, Nandor has safely withdrawn from the raging dumpster fire that is his emotions and lapsed back into his easy silence with his familiar. He shoves the thought of the almost-kiss to the furthest recess of his mind. Was it even an almost-kiss? Was he reading the moment wrong, and his familiar was just trying to be kind to him to assuage his insecurities about his neck scar?

“I have a surprise for you, master,” Guillermo breaks the silence. He darts to the vanity cabinet, procures another plastic bag from its depths, and shuffles back over to Nandor. He pulls out a bundle of leather and fabric and presents it to his master with a tiny flourish.

Nandor unfolds the contents in his lap gingerly. It’s a black leather jacket, the kind that he has seen all those motorcycle riders wearing around downtown, with those tricky contraptions called zippers on the sleeves and down the front. He is about to grimace in displeasure, when he notes that the lapels of the jacket and the cuffs around the zipper opening are intricately embroidered with the same deep gold pattern that edges his favorite black velvet cloak. When he turns over the jacket in curiosity, he finds, just as he suspected, that the painstaking curlicues fill the top shoulders down to the middle back in the same triangular formation as that formal cape of his.

Guillermo awkwardly reaches forward to pat the other leather thing that Nandor has missed sitting on his lap. It’s a maroon vest, so deeply dyed as to be almost oxblood, crafted of a thinner and more supple leather and embroidered with a complementary design to the jacket’s, this time in shiny black thread.

Taking Nandor’s speechlessness for being impressed, Guillermo grins and gives a nervous little laugh. “I took the liberty of ordering you something from Etsy, master. It’s custom-made. I sent her some photos of the designs on your favorite capes, and she charged a little extra because it’s kind of complicated, but it’s worth it.” Guillermo cocks his head. “I think it’s worth it. What do you think?”

“This woman from the Etsy--she did this with her own hands?” Nandor clarifies.

“Well--technically, I think they have digitized ways of--”

“She must be a virgin. Did you bring this virgin to me, Guillermo?”

“I--um--I--” Guillermo stammers. The velocity at which he turns tomato red has Nandor silently laughing. “Master,” the familiar attempts to recover himself with some semblance of sternness. “I just paid the nice lady for her handiwork, which I can imagine was a bitch to finish under time pressure. And also, she’s married and like, forty years old, so I highly doubt she’s exactly a virgin.”

Nandor shoots him a fanged grin as he presses the softest part of the leather jacket to his cheek. “I was just kidding, Guillermo. You humans are so...awful at humor.”

Guillermo gives him a very flat look just then that lets him know that no, he does not classify this as humorous at all, Nandor.

“Thank you, Guillermo,” Nandor says sincerely. “This was a very thoughtful gift. You know how much I like my capes because of how regal I look in them. It wouldn’t do to change my style and only fail to intimidate my enemies and victims.”

Guillermo decides it’s best not to mention right now that technically, this isn’t a gift because he took the funds straight from Nandor’s debit card. “You’re welcome, master,” is what he says instead.

“Okay, help me up, Guillermo, and help me get changed. I have somewhere to go tonight, and I would like very much to look my best.”

“Oh? Where are you going, master?”

“None of your business, Guillermo,” Nandor admonishes him. And then follows up barely a second later: “I am going to meet someone for a special night. And I would like for you to take the night off and not worry about me. You can take the car, actually, since I will be flying over there after this.”

Oh.

Oh, okay.

This is--this is fine.

Literally nothing about this situation feels fine to Guillermo, and everything in his brain is screaming _mayday, mayday_ , and he’s only realizing now what a pathetic idiot he’s been baring himself both literally and metaphorically in front of his master to show him his scars in the middle of a locked bathroom. And to think he even _considered_ the possibility that Nandor might be about to lean forward and kiss him…

Idiot, idiot, _idiot_.

He should have just let Nandor go wallowing on about being called a cosplaying moron instead of indulging him and his own fantasies about seeing his master in stubble and a leather jacket.

This is why we can’t have fucking nice things, Guillermo. Good going.

Guillermo comes back to himself and says softly, “Of course, master.”

\--

Objectively, Nandor the Relentless in his final outfit is...a vision.

Guillermo resents himself for how forcefully his eyes are filling with moisture when he isn’t reining in his emotions every second with utmost composure. When Nandor emerges from his crypt with his usual knee-high boots and dark trousers, but decked out on top with his simplest button-up and the embroidered leather waistcoat and jacket over it, Guillermo thinks he might be going weak in the knees.

It also really, totally doesn’t help that the newly trimmed beard shows off Nandor’s jawline which has been hidden all these years. And that wicked scar clawing its way across the left side of his neck.

Guillermo needs to dunk himself headfirst in a sink full of holy water. That, and probably get a new job stat, because he doesn’t know how much longer he can last in this position around Nandor looking like _that_ , and not reveal himself for the bumbling and jealous fool that he really is.

“Quickly, Guillermo, open the door,” Nandor hisses. “I do not wish for anyone to see me.”

Guillermo obliges. Nandor zips past him and out the front door into the night. Guillermo raises his hand in a belated wave. “Have...fun on your date, master.”

\--

Thirty minutes later, Guillermo is depressively rewatching his favorite _Shark Tank_ episodes in his room under the stairs, when his phone buzzes with a call from an unknown number.  
It’s not tagged as spam, which instantly piques his curiosity. He picks up. “Hello?”

“Is...this...Guillermo de la Cruz?”

“Uh--who’s asking?” He hopes it’s not a vampire hunter meeting. God, he really, really hopes it’s not a vampire hunter meeting. That would really just throw a wrench into his plans to binge watch his depression away tonight by adding a whole moral dilemma to his already crappy evening.

“Look, I’m just one of the waiters over here at the club, I really don’t know why your friend here had me call you with my phone if he had your number already memorized, but he says he needs your help and to please ask you to come quickly.”

An ugly cocktail of resentment and resignation is already pooling in the pit of Guillermo’s stomach. “Which friend?”

“Didn’t catch his name, but he’s a tall guy, kinda buff, black hair and leather jacket--”

“Okay. Yeah. Um. Yup. Thanks.” Guillermo waits long enough for the poor waiter dude to pass on the address of the establishment to him, jots it down on his arm, and hangs up and heads out to the car in the driveway.

He doesn’t care anymore that he’s muttering and swearing the whole way. How the _fuck_ does he always end up in these fucking situations, cleaning up after Nandor’s sorry ass?

\--

The club is secluded and in a surprisingly quiet, more upscale part of town when Guillermo finally finds it and slips into a parking spot in front. He doesn’t think he’s ever been down here, whether with Nadja on her tortuously long evening strolls or with his sister Vanesa during her restaurant-hopping days. The weathered brick exterior and old-fashioned sign almost strike him as the aesthetic of a tavern, but once he peeps inside the front window with his hands up to shield his eyes, he can make out a dimly lit ambience inside with silken tablecloths and tuxedo’ed waiters.

He almost knocks and asks to be let in, then scolds himself for the accursed habit he picked up from always being out and about with vampires.

The dark-circled, shock-quiffed waiter who greets him can be no other than the guy who called him twenty minutes ago. _Stephen_ , his nametag tells Guillermo.

“He’s over there,” Stephen says, with the energy level of someone who knows this is the last place on earth he wants to be.

Guillermo gets it. It’s the last place on earth he wants to be, too.

Guillermo squints in the direction that the waiter is pointing. As his eyes adjust to the gloom, he spots Nandor in a corner booth, spinning an empty drinking glass on its heels with one finger on the rim. A part of Guillermo is startled to realize that he almost didn’t recognize Nandor in his new and semi-modern getup, despite having been haunted viciously by the image of it for the last hour.

Guillermo squares his shoulders, forces his frown into something more neutral, and plods over.

“Master?”

“Guillermo!” Nandor greets him with a sudden descent of happiness over his features that blindsides his familiar.

“I came as soon as Stephen called. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Guillermo. Except that you’re quite late, huh?”

“Late?” Guillermo says, practically spluttering. “Late for what? You specifically told me you had a date tonight and to stay the fuck out of your way.”

“I told you to take the night off. No use getting your knees and hands all dirty mopping up for Nadja and Laszlo if I was going to need you here.”

Guillermo is quickly approaching the point where he’s seething from the ears. “ _No_ , you said ‘take the night off and don’t worry about me, and take the car.’ Which _clearly_ implies that you and I were going our separate ways. Which, thanks for that, by the way. Not telling me that you were going to meet someone and that’s why I was going to help you get all dressed up. It’s really cool when you withhold information like that from me. Really cool.”

Nandor stares at his familiar, consternation etched in every corner of his face, as Guillermo glares right back with his chest heaving and his fists clenched at his sides in righteous fury.

(Jealous, too, perhaps, but righteous.)

Guillermo mistakes Nandor’s stunned silence for an admission of guilt. He scoffs and glances around. “So, where are they, huh? Your date? Stood you up and now you want me to pick you up and take you back home because you don’t want to stomp down the sidewalk doing the walk of shame like a commoner?”

Nandor finds his tongue at last. “Guillermo,” he stammers. “Why are you so angry?”

“I’m not,” Guillermo all but yells. “I’m not angry. I’m just frustrated, and tired, and I’m sick of trying to read you all the time when you just like to jerk me around like a kitten on a string. It’s always about unspoken promises with you and--and-- _breaking_ those fucking promises.”

“Guillermo,” Nandor says again, this time in a completely different tone of voice. “Who did you think I was meeting?”

His familiar throws his hands up in the air. “Well, I don’t fucking know!”

“If you didn’t fucking know, you could have asked!” Nandor retorts petulantly. “I was meeting you!”

“I didn’t fucking know that because you don’t clarify shit!”

Guillermo stops short after his outburst, overcome by his heavy breathing. A record scratch plays in his head. “Wait...you were meeting me?”

Nandor reaches out to seize Guillermo’s wrist and gently tug him to take a seat across from him in the booth. “Guillermo, really. Look where we are. What kind of restaurant is this?”

“I don’t know,” Guillermo huffs, even as he crosses his arms and steals a glance around.

Humans. Human couples, human businesspeople, a few human families scattered here and there. Real actual human food on clinking plates and tinkling wine glasses.

Guillermo is overcome with the distinct realization that he is an idiot. However, much as he’d like to groan and facepalm right now, Nandor still is not excused from his equal, if not surpassing, idiocy.

Christ on a vintage bicycle.

“Why didn’t you just tell me where we were going so we could have gone at the same time?” he demands at last, deciding to sidestep the whole… _is this a date or is this not a date and is this actually just one of your whimsical outings that I’m misreading again_ aspect of the situation.

“I had to have dinner first, Guillermo. It would be very rude of me to have you watch me catch and eat my food afterwards,” Nandor explains, like it’s the most common-sense thing in the world.

“Right,” says Guillermo, like this entire situation isn’t weird at all.

Honestly, it’s surpassed weird and just sailed right into the stratosphere of all things bizarre.

Despite himself, Guillermo says softly, almost primly, “Did you have any trouble with the...disposal?” He instantly flushes to the tips of his ears and grabs the menu off the table between them to have something to hold and hide behind. He clears his throat.

Nandor tuts at him. “I told you not to worry about me tonight, Guillermo. You are doing a very shit job at obeying my orders.”

Right. So maybe Guillermo shouldn’t be pressing down a gigantic laugh at that, but it’s him. It’s them. It’s what they do.

Eventually, Guillermo decides on the french onion pork chops entrée with the tomato and basil soup and side of three-cheese bread. Not his healthiest choice ever, but he’s stressed and he still doesn’t know if he’s on an actual date right now and it has just been an all-around weird time since early this evening.

Guillermo squirms a little as Nandor studies him from across the table. The vampire has ceased playing with the glass and instead has both hands crossed at the wrist over the top of it as he eyes his familiar with what Guillermo can only describe as an intermingling of hunger and contentment. Guillermo becomes hyper aware of the fact that barring the few instances he’s wandered around the house popping chocolate-covered espresso beans or the occasional energy bar while in Nandor’s presence, never in his ten years of service has Nandor actually seen him sit down and _eat_. He feels bizarrely guilty about it and not just a little self-conscious.

Also, Nandor still hasn’t stopped staring at him like a sated cat who has nowhere better to be than basking in the delightful strip of sun across the carpet and blinking sleepy-eyed at its favorite human. It certainly doesn’t help Guillermo’s nerves that Nandor’s new look is bringing out completely new angles to the way he moves his head and twists his shoulders or leans forward or back. At some point between the time Nandor rushed out of the house and Guillermo arrived at the restaurant, Nandor pulled his hair back, and it’s--frankly, it’s doing things to Guillermo that it has no business doing.

Guillermo finally starts to feel a little more comfortable when the food arrives. Comfortable enough to speak up around a mouthful of broccoli: “Why are we here, master?”

Nandor looks like he’s about to come up with one of his adorable but stupid comebacks, so Guillermo heads that off with a quick, “I mean, why did you even want to sit with me while I’m eating? We’ve never done this before.”

“Your macarena and cheese meals are pathetic. And very unhealthy, Colin Robinson tells me. Sometimes when we’re playing chess I can hear everything going down in your stomach. Eugh,” Nandor says with way too much candidness for the situation.

If there were a camera here right now, Guillermo would be seeking it out and staring straight into the lens with his most long-suffering expression.

He decides to make life a little bit harder for Nandor. “Okay, but why here? Why tonight?” Guillermo swallows. “And why...why the new look in particular?”

Nandor knows he’s not dumb. He looks as if he’s awfully tempted to deflect yet again, but one solid look at the flint in Guillermo’s eyes gives the vampire pause.

“I am...very old,” he starts out, and Guillermo simultaneously knows where this is going and has no idea what’s coming next. “I have been on this earth for almost eight hundred years. Not that I have been counting--birthdays are very overrated, you know.” Nandor twists the garnet ring around his middle finger with his characteristic tic of anxiety. “And you are a creature of this century, Guillermo. I don’t know how you have been so fascinated with such ancient things for so long. I know that ten years is kind of a long time for you humans. I think I…”

Guillermo looks up at him, makes eye contact, silently encouraging him to go on.

“I suppose I just wanted to try what it’s like to be part of your century. You know. Since you seem to like it and I want to...like the things you like.”

Well, shit. Guillermo stops chewing entirely.

Is he hyperventilating? He’s pretty sure he’s not, but whatever it is that his stomach is doing, it certainly is not calming the fuck down. Because that’s a fucking love confession from Nandor the Relentless if ever he heard one.

Guillermo seriously wonders if his last errand to the witches’ shop somehow sucked him into an alternate dimension and he hasn’t been aware of the swap, inexplicably, until now.

 _Maybe he means as friends_ , his mind hisses at him. _Friends can want to like what friends like too, you know. Stop being such a lovesick buffoon_.

With all this turmoil swirling inside him, Guillermo offers a shrug and says, “I don’t know I particularly _like_ being in this century, but...y’know. It has its benefits.”

“Then what do you like, Guillermo?”

Guillermo meets his gaze challengingly. “I don’t know. What do you think I like?”

“Vampires,” Nandor says without missing a beat or letting his confident, pensive look slip from him. He grins with both fangs. “I’m kidding, Guillermo. Mostly. Hm.” He taps his chin. “You like to draw portraits but you don’t like to show them. How am I supposed to know if they’re any good if you keep hiding them from me? Ah! You also like playing music and dancing at three in the afternoon.”

Guillermo’s face heats faster than a live wire. Sure, he may be nursing a Bruce Springsteen obsession, but he didn’t think he was being _that_ obvious about it. Nandor supposedly sleeps like the dead (every single pun intended) at three in the afternoon.

“You also like to criticize my eloquent speech, too,” Nandor adds with a sniff, glancing askance, because he can never be that serious for more than two consecutive sentences, apparently.

Guillermo doesn’t know what to say to that. So he doesn’t say anything and starts chewing again.

“You also like my scars, which is mostly nice,” Nandor says, this time so quietly that his familiar almost misses it.

For a split second Guillermo seriously considers the possibility that whoever Nandor ate on his way here was drunk off his ass. But when he looks up at his master, there is no trace of mirth or trickery on Nandor’s face: only an uncomfortable and foreign kind of vulnerability, the kind that seems so much more open now without the mask of the long beard and flowing hair that Nandor can usually exist behind, and the stone-cold soberness in his eyes makes something stir inside Guillermo.

Guillermo takes a sip of his wine.

“I do,” he says, just as softly. “And...what do you like?”

“What does Guillermo think I like?” Nandor retorts with a twinkle in his eye.

His familiar shakes his head. “No, I know what you like. I’m wondering if you think I think you like what you actually like.”

Nandor decidedly doesn’t get too entangled in the problematic grammar of what Guillermo just said. “I like your scars, too.”

Guillermo finds the strength to draw a deep breath from somewhere within him. At this rate, he’s barely holding onto the vestiges of his sanity, plagued instead by intrusive and highly entertaining images of making out with a certain vampire against the wall.

“Thanks,” he chokes out. “Nobody’s ever, uh...really said that to me.”

“So I am your first, Guillermo?”

That’s--okay. Guillermo barely stops his wine from going up his nose. “Thanks for the dinner, too, master,” he rasps out.

“You’re most welcome, my--” Nandor searches the air for the word. “Guillermo.” He gestures at Guillermo’s plate scraped mostly clean of its contents. “Are you finished? Would you like a dessert?”

“Oh, no, I’m fine, thank you--”

“We are going to have dessert,” Nandor decides. “But not here. Come, come. Time to go.”

“We have to pay.”

“No worries, Guillermo. I hypnotized the guy over there to call you on his intelligent phone. I can hypnotize him to let us leave.”

“That’s--Stephen was definitely _not_ hypnotized to call me, master.”

On cue, the ever-harried and bag-eyed waiter slides up to their booth to wordlessly hand them the check. Guillermo digs out Nandor’s card from his wallet to pay, the multi-layered irony of the situation not at all being lost on him.

Five minutes later finds Nandor tugging Guillermo impatiently out of the restaurant. Something about his new silhouette is off-putting to Guillermo--sure, with his billowing cape and clunking boots from before, he always cut an imposing figure, but now bereft of the cape he just seems to tower over Guillermo for miles.

“Master, the car is over--”

“Guillermo.” Nandor pulls up short, causing his familiar to walk right into his arm and flail for balance. Nandor grips him easily by his upper arms and steadies him there in the shadows of the sidewalk.

Guillermo looks up at him without anything to say, partly from being breathless from almost falling and partly from being stunned by the tenderness with which Nandor caught him.

“Thank you for going to dinner with me tonight,” Nandor says. The moonlight glances off the point of his fangs with a wink.

Guillermo could say something like, _well, not like I even knew I was going to have dinner with you until about twenty minutes ago_. He could say, _you literally had Stephen call me over and I thought I was going to find you bawling because your date stood you up_. Or even better, _of course I’d go to dinner with you, because don’t you see, I’m a lovesick fool and there’s no hope left for me?_

Instead he says nothing. His brain is empty. The moonbeams light up Nandor’s silhouette from the back of him, in a vision both terrifying and awe-inspiring, and as the wind picks up and tugs the strands from Nandor’s bun in a way that Guillermo has never seen before, he feels his heart thud once, twice against the confines of his rib cage. And he knows he could lean up and close the distance between them. Finish what they started in the bathroom just a few hours ago. He knows it.

Something stupidly brave, crafted of the hope and recklessness that daily war inside Guillermo, makes him reach up and brush his hand over the pattern of the scar on Nandor’s neck where it lies exposed to the moonlight now and shines, pale and daringly beautiful, in the night.

Nandor doesn’t shift his touch away from Guillermo’s upper arms. If ever, he only tightens his grip infinitesimally.

The eye contact he makes with his familiar is searing. Nandor has always been blessed with eyes that can shine both cold and burning at the same time.

“Nandor,” Guillermo says, so muted that even vampire ears could miss it.

Hands still on his human’s arms, the warmth of Guillermo’s heartbeat thrumming through the skin of his fingers pressed against Nandor’s neck, Nandor pulls Guillermo close and tilts his head and kisses him.

Guillermo is immediately devoid of all coherence.

Nandor is kissing him.

Shit. Nandor is _kissing him_.

Warm lips slot against cool ones in a tangle of breath and teeth. Nandor presses into him, minding the fangs, but even he can’t help the point of his canines scraping lightly over the inner surface of Guillermo’s mouth. All breath leaves Guillermo, and he leans all into the kiss, into Nandor, and opens up his mouth for more.

Nandor makes a noise almost like a moan. Guillermo’s head spins at the sound and he loses all sense of space and balance. His one coherent thought is to thank the heavens that Nandor’s still holding him, because when he seems to tip into a vortex he suddenly becomes aware of Nandor walking him backward until his back presses up against the cold, damp texture of the brick wall behind him. Guillermo strokes Nandor’s neck with his thumb just to hear him make that sound again.

“Guillermo,” Nandor says, pulling away just to let him breathe, and he sounds gravelly and undone in ways Guillermo has never heard him before.

Nandor dips his head back down and Guillermo wraps his other arm around Nandor’s neck to meet him. Their tongues dance, the heat and the cool. Guillermo has always fantasized about this part--this moment--when finally he can taste Nandor, but now that it’s happened, all memory of what he ever thought Nandor would taste like has flown from his mind.

Nandor’s fang scrapes a little less gently across the top of Guillermo’s tongue. And God, if that doesn’t make the heat shoot straight through him. The steady pressure of Nandor’s thigh between his legs certainly is not helping.

And then, just like waking up with a start, Guillermo feels the patter of a raindrop on his cheek.

Nandor pulls away, just as breathless, and they both look up at the sky swiftly clouding over above them. He starts to make a face. Guillermo can’t help it: a giggle bubbles up inside him, and then he snorts, and then he’s laughing.

“It is very inconvenient to keep making out here,” Nandor grumbles. “You’re laughing. Why are you laughing?”

“No reason,” Guillermo lies through his grin.

“Come on, Guillermo, let’s go home. And do be taking the shortest route there, please.” Nandor flashes him a full-fanged smile in return.

Guillermo makes no move to escape the rain, but rather keeps beaming up at him like the dumbass that he is. Pneumonia be damned. He’s all warmth and butterflies and trembling nerves all over.

“ _Guillermo_ ,” Nandor scolds him. He slips out of his leather jacket with no little effort and holds it up over his familiar’s head. His gaze lingers a moment on the sparkle of raindrops caught in Guillermo’s curls.

Finally Guillermo moves to walk in step with him, and they rush out across the sidewalk to find the car parked in front of the restaurant. They pile in with a huff, Nandor shaking the water off himself like a wet dog, and Guillermo still stifling his laugh at how Nandor’s baby hairs plaster to the side of his face.

“I like the look of this embroidered leather, yes, but it is so fucking tiny when you need to get out of the elements,” Nandor complains. He brushes more droplets off his leather waistcoat. “Eugh. We must always pack my emergency cape on nights like this, Guillermo.”

Guillermo didn’t think his heart could swell any bigger than it already was, but it does upon hearing the implication that nights like this will become a regular occurrence in the future. His cheeks hurt, possibly, from how much he’s smiling. “Of course, master. Good call.”

Just as Guillermo turns the key in the ignition, Nandor stops him with a hand on his wrist. Guillermo turns to cast him a quizzical look, and Nandor cups the side of his face and presses another kiss to his lips.

“You taste like dead pig,” says Nandor.

“That’s what I just ate.” Guillermo means it to be sarcastic, but it comes out all breathless.

Nandor hums. He goes back in for another kiss. And then another.

“Okay,” he says, finally pulling away. He gestures impatiently. “Let’s go.”

Guillermo bites his lip, savoring the taste of Nandor there one more time, and starts up the engine to back out of the parking spot and head home. And if he keeps the stupid little grin on his face the whole ride there, and he notices Nandor stealing glances at him with an equally self-satisfied smirk and a spark in his eye, well--both of them know better than to mention it.

Art by theshriekingsisterhood on tumblr

**Author's Note:**

> ...i have literally no experience with or lingering feelings about almost-kisses in a bathroom and kissing in the rain, what are you talking about
> 
> I should be deeply apologetic about this utter self-indulgence of a fic, but I'm not. Comment to let me know what you thought of it? Which was your favorite part? What other scenarios do you want to see from this verse? (I definitely foresee scars recurring as a theme throughout...hehe) thanks for reading and i love you <3 -kaleb
> 
> my socials:  
> tumblr: theoceanismyinkwell  
> insta: kc.barrie  
> wattpad: kalebbarrie
> 
> EDIT: Omg my friend just made the completely amazing fanart embedded above of Nandor at the restaurant in his new outfit!! I'm slain. Deceased. Please go follow them on tumblr at [theshriekingsisterhood](http://theshriekingsisterhood.tumblr.com) because their art and content are beyond description!!


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